I have hesistated to post about the remembrance of the Hamas atrocities of October 7 because, frankly, I feel burned when I post even excerpts from people — often people of profound Jewish faith and deep moral insight — about what happened last October...
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
There have been strong attempts to silence and censor some voices, to slap the ugly label of antisemitism on anyone asking whether atrocious violence in response to atrocious violence is a solution to anything at all — including many Jewish people and many Jewish people of profound faith and strong moral conviction.
As an outsider to the Jewish community, I have no right to address these issues as if I'm an insider.
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
This is why I have sought all along to listen to Jewish thinkers who have always taught me so much, whose religious insights reach the core of my non-Jewish soul, whose moral sensibility is so inspiring.
I'm an outsider to the grief and rage those who lost relatives or who are deeply connected to Israel for good reasons have felt in wake of October 7. I understand and honor their grief.
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by [email protected]
I have Jewish friends, and I have Palestinian friends. I hear grief on both sides, and I feel pain emanating from both sides. To me as someone standing "in the middle," the humanity of both sets of friends counts profoundly. This is where I will keep standing as my own moral centerpoint no matter how much anyone on any side tries to bully me into silence — and you do not promote a moral viewpoint when you silence and bully others.
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
All that by way of preface to sharing some things I've read today and recently that speak strongly to me:
"At times I have felt almost paralyzed with hopelessness, not only because of the foolishness and cruelty of political leaders but because of what I see in my fellow citizens."
~ Paul Waldman
#October7 #Israel #Netanyahu #Gaza #Palestine #Lebanon
/5
A Year of Anguish and Self-Delusion
On October 7th one year after, and the difficulty of hope.
(paulwaldman.substack.com)
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"I have been staggered by the amount of time and energy that is spent on denying the humanity of others and insisting that today’s crimes are justified by yesterday’s, that some people’s suffering can be ignored or dismissed as meaningless while other people’s suffering excuses the most monstrous savagery."
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"It is not both-sidesism or facile moral equivalency to see these tendencies from both Israelis and Palestinians, and advocates for both. On this anniversary one can’t ignore how many treat the pogrom of October 7 — 1,200 people killed, hundreds taken hostage, families murdered in their homes, butchery to rival the worst of history’s massacres —"
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"as trivial or excusable or even cause for celebration, an act of resistance granted righteousness by what came before and after, without any need to consider what it actually consisted of. People tear down posters of the hostages held by Hamas, lest anyone see them and consider their humanity. …
I’ve tried in vain to find anyone who can offer a plausible path to a peaceful future for Israel that begins with what is happening now."
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"As Israeli philosopher Oded Na’aman writes, 'Of course, even if the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip were possible it would be abhorrent, but at this moment it is important to understand that many Israelis support the immense use of force for the sake of a goal that upon reflection they themselves admit is unachievable. There is simply no available vision of a tolerable future.'”
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by [email protected]
"Part of Judaism’s voice comes for me very powerfully in this notion, also in the Talmud, that G-d created Adam, who is not of any race or religion. Judaism does not believe that Adam and Eve were Jews. They were universal human beings before G-d creates a covenant with Abraham."
~ Peter Beinart
#October7 #Israel #Netanyahu #Gaza #Palestine #Lebanon
/10
Atoning for the Past Year
For My Sins Against My People and Against The Principle of Human Equality
(peterbeinart.substack.com)
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"And the Talmud says that one of the reasons that there was one singular person created by G-d was that so nobody could say that my father is greater than your father, which is to say that my lineage, my tribe, my race, whatever, is greater; that we are all descended from fundamentally the same people, and that it is a grave sin to create a hierarchy among human beings."
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"And yet I also feel that so much of the discourse over the last year has been saturated with a sense of the hierarchy of human lives, that Israeli Jewish lives, or, for that matter, American lives, or Western lives, really matter. And Palestinian lives just don’t matter as much, or Lebanese lives [don't] matter. Maybe they have some value, but just they’re not as important."
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"Some of the most fraught debates this past year in the anti-war camp have been over the politics of mourning, producing a novel and painful lexicon of grief."
~ Naomi Klein
#October7 #Israel #Netanyahu #Gaza #Palestine #Lebanon
/13
How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war
A year later, memorials to the 7 October attacks use art, virtual reality and dark tourism to stir support for limitless violence. But there is a different way to remember
the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"While many (including me) openly grieved the Israeli civilians killed in the 7 October attacks, many also pointed out that Palestinian lives are systematically treated as 'ungrievable' (invoking a phrase from Judith Butler). In contrast, Israeli lives are, in the words of the historian Gabriel Winant, 'pre-grieved',"
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"because 'an apparatus is already in place to take their deaths and give them not just any meaning, but specifically the meaning that they find in the bombs falling on Gaza.'"
-
@wdlindsy Talmud is fine but how can they ignore the 36 places in Torah where they are admonished to treat foreigners and strangers fairly?
-
@ottomate Peter Beinart is citing the Talmud to make that very point — he's not ignoring it.
-
Cat C-Breplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy thank you so much for this thread. My sore heart required it today.
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"I want to focus on one particular aspect that captures the heartbreak I feel. I want to remember the children who have perished and otherwise been harmed in this abominable conflict. Because that was the first thing that came to my mind this morning.
There is nothing that captures the depravity of war more than the death of children."
~ Eliot Kirschner
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
"I write all of this knowing that it is not only Israel and Gaza. It’s also Lebanon, and Sudan, and Ukraine, and all sorts of other places where children are suffering. I think of children lost in the recent hurricane, and to the opioid epidemic, to gun violence, and to horrific (many curable) diseases. ...
If this precious world has any future at all, it will be because of the children."
-
William Lindsey :toad:replied to Cat C-B last edited by
@megmuttonhead You're welcome. My heart is sore, too. So much suffering, pain, injustice, and so much of it due to the evil, malice, and inflated egos of some men running things in our world.
